South Korean youth demonstrate keen…

“When Lee Jin Ju pauses to think about the nuclear crisis brewing over the Korean peninsula, she knows exactly whom she fears.

“George Bush,” replies the 22-year-old accounting student without missing a beat. “He’s a war maniac.”

There is a tendency, particularly among the young, to shrug off the current situation as the creation of a hysterical White House. Many South Koreans see their estranged brethren to the north more as objects of pity than of fear, and the Americans less as saviors who defended them against communism than as potential troublemakers.

The Koreans think there is no need to worry about North Korea developing nuclear weapons,” Kim said. “They figure that Kim Jong Il loves life too much to start a war that he will surely lose…. But Bush, on the other hand, is an ascetic and a warrior.”